An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination_ A Memoir - Elizabeth McCracken [32]
“Well, very good,” Dr. Knoeller said at the end of every visit. “So far, so good. Let’s hope it continues that way.”
And then I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant, and when Dr. Knoeller walked into the room, I swore you could see Walt Disney bluebirds toying with her stethoscope and bunnies congregating around her heels.
“Twenty-eight weeks!” she said. “Now we can relax.”
For my first pregnancy I couldn’t imagine not finding out the baby’s gender. I’d asked Lib why she’d allowed her two daughters to keep their mystery in utero, and she said, “I didn’t want to project who I thought they’d be. I wanted them to be themselves.”
This is exactly the kind of thoughtful and maternal answer I’d expected from Lib. Me, I wanted to project. I was impatient to make up stories about whoever Pudding was, kicking about in my midsection, but how could I without that essential piece of information? For our second child we decided to do everything differently — no amnio, no peeking during ultrasounds. Now and then I wondered whether that was wise: should something happen (it won’t!), should the worst happen (it’s not impossible!), wouldn’t we rather know? It’s terrible to miss Pudding, of course, no matter what, but — this is a total illusion, I understand, nothing but the sentimentality of expectant parents spinning fairy tales ahead of time, viewed in the rearview mirror — it feels like we knew him. I can’t wrap my brain around losing a child and learning only then whether you’d lost a son or a daughter. Not finding out felt like an odd form of optimism.
By the end of my first pregnancy I’d felt very tender toward Pudding — to my made-up companionable Pudding, an infant who would of course love us the minute he saw us, who loved us already, who contained within him not only infancy but babyhood and toddlerhood, who already listened to our voices, who was impatient to meet us (so why was he taking his time?). I stroked my stomach and told him stories; when he kicked, I poked him back. We went to the pool together, me swimming in the chlorinated municipal water of Bergerac, he swimming inside me, both incredulous at how the French could gossip while doing the backstroke. We went to the gym together, where the French not only gossiped and kissed each other in the squat rack, but tucked their shirts into their exercise pants. I ate so that he could eat: I announced what was on the menu.
You don’t need much to hang a personality on someone you haven’t met: a name, some knowledge of the parents, a gender. You can spin anything you want out of those things.
But it wasn’t all so easy. Every now and then, like any pregnant woman, I would panic. When did I last feel this baby move? Then I would lie on the sofa, and put my hands on my stomach, and wait to feel a kick, and then another. Both Dr. Baltimore and Dr. Bergerac had sonograms in their offices, and so for the first six months we saw Pudding on the Big Screen every month. Yes, I did worry, sometimes.
But mostly I didn’t.
This is one of the most painful things for me to remember. I was smug. I felt sorry for women with complicated pregnancies and gloated that I wasn’t one of them. I believed that the pregnancy would continue to be a delight. I imagined that traveling with him afterward, at four weeks old, to England and then to America, would be only an adventure, a story I would tell him for the rest of his life.
I believed he was perfect.
I don’t know whether my faith is explained by hormones or misplaced trust in medical science. I just believed he was perfect. I believed I understood him.
Of course that wasn’t true of my second pregnancy, when I was certain every other moment that something was going terribly wrong. I was neurotic about food; I washed my hands like an insane person. Among